


Recovery and Reconstruction 6 -- Courage

by Viola_Laterra



Series: Recovery and Reconstruction [6]
Category: The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
Genre: F/M, Post-Canon, Resolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-25
Updated: 2019-03-25
Packaged: 2019-12-07 07:52:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,618
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18232052
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Viola_Laterra/pseuds/Viola_Laterra
Summary: Link and Zelda go to explore the Leviathan skeleton in the Gerudo desert, and then camp out on the plateaus to the north of Gerudo Town.  They begin to explore the attraction they've both been harboring for each other... with exceedingly rewarding results.





	Recovery and Reconstruction 6 -- Courage

The next morning, Link realized he had quite a headache. It had only been the one drink, of course, but he knew he hadn't drunk enough water to compensate and stay hydrated. This was the same headache he got if he let himself get too dry while running around the Gerudo desert all day... only much worse than he'd experienced in the past. He sighed, rooted around in his things for one of the elixirs he usually used only for recovery after a long day in the desert, and took a sip. The feeling of it sliding down his throat, and the way its energy radiated out into his body... it was familiar, reassuring, in addition to its healing effects. Not at all like the unfamiliar sensations of Zelda leaning into him last night, possessively telling that flirtatious Gerudo that he was there with her.

Zelda was often stubborn or forceful, and they'd certainly touched, before, but the way she'd been looking at him... well, he hadn't been offended when the Gerudo had offered, but he was pleased and a little excited by the fact that Zelda was feeling so possessive. Maybe that sort of thing could go too far, but at least in that moment, he *wanted* to belong to her. And certainly had no interest in the Gerudo's offer.

Or maybe he did already belong to Zelda, and he just longed to do something about it. And it wasn't that these thoughts were alien... he'd just been trying to avoid them until now, and last night made that much more difficult.

He shook his head, trying to focus. Who knew how Zelda was feeling this morning, no longer under the influence. He'd caught stray glances that betrayed attraction, for quite some time now, but her openly desirous gaze that night... it could have been the drink, after all.

So he set about getting up, getting dressed in his Gerudo garb, and getting organized. When he made his way out to the inn's lounge, he found Zelda already there, to his surprise. She didn't usually wake earlier than he did.

She smiled weakly at him. "Good morning, Link. Did you sleep well?" Her eyes looked a little strange as she said it, but he dismissed that. He told her he had, though he'd had a headache when he woke.

"Oh! I do as well. It *is* reported to be a side effect of hard alcohol, I know," Zelda responded, then winced. "And in particular, mixed drinks. And... come to think of it, this was one of the things Urbosa warned me about, to try to discourage me from trying it, back... then."

He chuckled a little, and pulled out some of the elixir for her, suggested it would make her feel better. She reached out and took it, and her fingers brushed his hand, causing a little shiver to run down his spine. Was that how it was going to be, today, he wondered? Would every little thing set him off? Well, no way but forward, and wondering what might happen wouldn't help anything.

As he wrestled with these thoughts, Zelda had taken a sip of the elixir, and brightened almost immediately. He saw a glow envelop her for a moment, realizing that must be what it looked like when he used them himself.

"That *is* effective," she said. "One of your recipes?" she added, a little slyly. He nodded, smiling, and reddening a little as he remembered her compliments on his cooking from a few nights ago. He said, as he had then, that he'd really tried every combination you could think of.

She laughed. "And some I probably couldn't think of, I imagine." He chuckled. Then he asked her what her plans were for where to go next.

Zelda said, "Well, I do think we need to speak with the Great Deku Tree, because he obviously can't come to a council meeting unless we hold it in the forest, and I don't think the Koroks will necessarily make good representatives. But I don't want to make that decision for them. And... it's always important to consult the oldest and wisest of us." Link nodded, and they turned to leave the inn, Zelda thanking Romah, the innkeeper, on their way out. Link raised a hand to Romah, who winked at him. He reddened anew, remembering that back when he'd tried her spa treatment, she'd commented on how muscular he was for a Hylian. She was one of those who he suspected knew he was a voe but respected his choice of gender presentation while he was in Gerudo Town.

As they walked through the town, Zelda said, almost shyly, "I... I *would* like to make a stop here in the desert first." Link looked at her questioningly, and she said, "Well... you told me you had seen leviathan bones out there?" He nodded. "I... I know you did take a picture of them, I've studied it since, but I was hoping to see it for myself, maybe take some more pictures and some measurements."

Link nodded again, and suggested they catch some sand seals to travel out to the leviathan.

Zelda said, "Oh! Of course. I haven't done that in... well, in a long time. I *did* use the noble beasts for surveying, back... then. We'll have to see if I still have my touch for it." Both Zelda and Link had their own way of referring to the time a hundred years ago when the Champions had been alive. Zelda still said it delicately, "back... then," almost every time. But over time, Link heard less and less sadness, pain, and regret in her voice when she said it. After a while it had become just a fact of their lives.

They made their way out to the edge of town, and then to the desert. They each set off in a slightly different direction, in search of a sand seal to ride. Link spotted one and became utterly focused on sneaking up behind it and grabbing the lead the Gerudos left on nearly all the seals. There *was* the odd sand seal without a harness and lead, but it was a part of their culture that the creatures were fitted with this equipment when the seal was young. In fact, it was an early task done by Gerudo children as a training exercise.

Link shimmied close to the seal, and made a sudden leap to grab the lead. He'd succeeded, and the animal took off, but he slowed it down and turned it back around, looking to see if Zelda had found one. He located her just in time to see her pounce and miss, falling face-first into the sand. He did his best not to let on that he'd seen that bit of indignity, and by the time he made his way over to her, she'd caught one on her second attempt.

"Lead on, then," she said to him. He nodded and took off for the leviathan bones. It was due southwest from Gerudo Town, and with the sand seals, it didn't take very long to get there. When they arrived, Zelda was beside herself with excitement and awe.

"Oh! Can you just imagine what this creature must have looked like when it was alive!" She let her sand seal go and immediately ran off to get a closer look. Link rode his seal in a little circle around the leviathan, to make sure there were no stray enemies or aggressive wildlife around. He did have to shoot a few stray creatures, but then, satisfied, he let his seal go too, and joined Zelda in the enormous skeletal rib-cage. She was looking up, as if in a daze. He imagined she was trying to visualize what the creature would have looked like.

She rummaged around in her things and pulled out a rope with knots in it; as she unwound it, he saw that they were spaced regularly apart. She went around the skeleton, measuring the circumference of various bones, taking pictures with the Sheikah slate, and making notes about her measurements. A few times she asked him to hold one end of the rope, and she counted the knots as she walked from one set of ribs to the other. "Oh, its lung capacity would have been astronomical," she said excitedly to him. He laughed and agreed. It was good to see her like this -- genuinely engaged in what she was doing, delighted and happy. Not worrying about what it meant to be Queen, and not... well, not looking at him *that* way. Not that he minded when she did, of course... and as she ran around, he started thinking again of how she had felt, pressed against him, how her fingers had entwined with his, and started daydreaming about entwining other things... 

Zelda abruptly interrupted his reverie. "Link!" she said. "Link, can I trouble you to climb up on top of the spine, so we can measure from there? The length of the shortest rib, at the least, would be very useful." He nodded, and promptly clambered up to the top of the skeleton, tied the top of the rope to one of the long processes protruding from the vertebrae, just as Zelda had instructed him, so the first knot was just on the side of the vertebra, and then climbed back down the rib, uncoiling the rope as he went and counting the knots. When he reached the ground, he reported the number to Zelda, who enthusiastically wrote it down.

He gave the rope a little shake to set it loose again, and coiled it back up and handed it to her. "Thank you," she said, taking it from him. She must have been finished with her survey and back to thinking about other things, because as she looked in his eyes, she had that shy-desirous expression again. He swallowed and smiled at her, and asked her where to next.

"Well, off to the Deku tree, I suppose," she said, sounding a little disappointed. He realized she knew as much as he did that the Deku tree would bring her back to the reality of the politics she needed to work through for the Council, and for her eventual coronation. He tried to think of what might cheer her up. Then he remembered her joy at seeing the inside of the Sheikah shrine, and offered to show her a few more, on their way to see the Great Deku tree.

She accepted excitedly, and they proceeded to look for some more sand seals, which took some time out in the middle of the desert. The seals tended to spend a lot of time near Gerudo Town, as the denizens fed them to keep them nearby. But eventually Link and Zelda found a couple of seals, and were riding away, back towards the cliffs to the north. Link led the way; he did his best to take as direct a route as possible, but he thought that by the time they reached the cliffs and climbed up a little ways, it might already be time to make camp.

After a surprisingly lengthy trip, during which it was impossible to talk and Link was glad for his face covering due to the sand flying around, they arrived at the foot of the cliffs. He released his sand seal, and Zelda followed suit a moment later. She looked to him for what to do next, and he nodded firmly to her as he turned to climb the cliff. She seemed a bit nervous, so he told her he would climb up first, and lower a rope to her. She nodded to him. "All right," she said.

So Link climbed up the cliff, just to the first flat area. He wanted to make camp far enough above the dunes that they wouldn't be dealing with windblown sand all night, and in a spot that would be defensible. Once he reached the top, he pulled out a sturdy rope, secured one end to a rock outcrop behind him, tied a loop in the other end with a solid double figure-eight knot, and lowered it down to Zelda.

She surprised him by starting to climb up the rope; not as deftly as he climbed, but with a strength he hadn't expected. She got about halfway up before she started to slow down, so he started helping, bracing himself against another outcrop near the edge and hauling the rope up, hand over hand.

Zelda came up over the edge all at once, and flopped down on the stone, breathing heavily. Link, concerned, knelt down next to her, offering a hand up. She looked up at him, and smiled ruefully. "I thought maybe I had it in me to climb up, but apparently not," she said. He shook his head at her and told her she'd climbed higher than he'd planned on; that she'd done well. She sighed, said thanks, and took his hand, coming to stand next to him a little unsteadily.

So unsteadily, actually, that she stumbled, and he moved to catch her. This resulted in him with his hands on her shoulders, and her with hers on his waist, which was still bare in the Gerudo outfit. He shivered at the feelings set loose by her touch on his bare skin, and he tried to stay focused, leading her over to the place he intended to make the fire and set up to sleep for the night, right up next to the rock face above them.

She sat down gratefully; apparently too tired to have noticed his reaction to her touch. He set about making the fire. Though it wasn't cold yet, the sun was about to go down, and then the temperature would drop rapidly... and it did take a little while for a fire to get going to the point where it would be comfortable.

As he piled up the wood and pulled out a blade and flint to set a spark in it, Zelda seemed to recover and set about trying to dust herself off. 

"Oh, I do *not* miss the sand. That is one thing I never enjoyed about coming to the desert." She looked over at Link, and then said in shock, as she continued to try to get the sand out of various crevices, "How is it *you* are not coated in it?"

He looked down at himself and realized she was right. Something about the way the Gerudo clothing was made, or what it was made out of, meant that it kept the sand off. He shrugged, finished setting the fire, and said that it was an advantage of the clothing.

She was looking at him coyly again. "Well, the clothes really do suit you." He tried to take the compliment in stride, thanking her, but couldn't break eye contact as she held his gaze. A million intimate thoughts flew through his head before she looked away. He tried to marshal himself.

She gazed into the flickers of the fire contemplatively and said, "You know, I dressed as a Sheikah boy once." He started in surprise; he'd never imagined Zelda would have done something like that. He leaned in eagerly, hoping she'd elaborate.

She smiled at him. "Well, it was part of Impa's training for me. It meant I could go around Hyrule and no one knew it was me. Of course, that was the best part... but you know, I also felt different, like I could be more forward with my opinions than usual... and people responded to me differently. It was quite interesting. And... a lot of fun." She giggled. He laughed with her.

"Of course, when my father heard of it, that was the end of that." She sighed, then turned to watch the sun sink below the horizon. They sat in companionable silence for some time, until it grew cold and Link shivered.

Zelda looked over at him as he went and got a blanket from their supplies and wrapped it around himself by the fire. He said ruefully that one downside of the clothes was that when the sun goes down in the desert, and the darkness falls, it gets cold quickly and the clothes aren't warm enough. She nodded. "Yes, Gerudo metabolism is higher than Hylians. They... they give off a lot of heat," she said, and blushed. Link guessed that she was thinking of Urbosa. "I'm sure it means that they can get away with less clothing, even at night." He nodded. 

After a moment, he realized she was shivering, too. He wordlessly held the edge of the blanket out to her; in retrospect, he wasn't sure what exactly he was inviting, after last night, but his first thought had simply been for her comfort.

But she seemed to be considering something, before getting up, coming over, and then sitting down and scooching close, ducking under not just the blanket, but his arm, too. He almost caught his breath audibly, but managed to hide that reaction. She hesitated a moment, but then leaned into him. He let his arm rest against her, pulling the blanket around them both.

She felt good, nestled into him. She was warm, and soft, wearing her usual padded traveling clothes. She'd clearly been too hot during the day, but now she was better off than he was. They sat there for a while, quietly. He was finding it extremely hard not to become distracted with the smell of her, and the sensations of her clothing against his bare skin, and the way her warmth seemed to penetrate into his bones... where he'd been chilled, now he was quite comfortable.

After a while, Zelda shifted slightly away and turned to look him in the eyes. "Last night," she began, clearly choosing her words with care, "What did you mean, when you said that you *were* there with me?"

He felt his face flush a little at her words, remembering how he'd been feeling when he'd said it. Maybe a little under the influence of the drink, sure, but he'd meant that there was no one else still alive in Hyrule that he'd rather be there with. That it hadn't been a lie or a cheat to get him out of the Gerudo propositioning him... he was, on some level, legitimately there with her, and wished it really *was* in a romantic capacity. And he wanted to tell her that, now. But he lost his courage somehow, and made some dismissive comment about how he was her appointed knight, after all.

She arched an eyebrow and put a hand on her hip, under the blanket. "Come now," she said, a touch of imperiousness in her voice, "That's not *all* you meant. At least, that's what your eyes said, then." He caught his breath. Was he that transparent to her? They did know each other so well, by this point, that he supposed he should have expected her to see right through him. And he spoke so little, even now, that she was expert at reading his body language. So of course she could accurately guess what he was thinking, even when he kept it to himself.

Zelda suddenly looked cautious. "And... that's what your eyes say, now, too. That it's not just about duty, being with me."

Link hesitated a moment, wavering... this felt like something that couldn't be undone. But then he suddenly found his courage -- maybe it was the spirits of the Champions, within him, who told him to go ahead, already. So he nodded, once, emphatically.

"I *thought* so," Zelda said. It was the same tone of voice she used when she'd been ciphering on some technological or natural history question, and confirmed her hypothesis. A note of triumph, of self-satisfaction, and pleasure.

Then there was a moment where neither of them seemed to know what to do next; but then Zelda put a hand out to his cheek, and then leaned in to kiss him.

At first it was very sweet. Like the kiss you see at weddings. Not... chaste, exactly, but soft, light... promissory. It felt more substantial than Mipha's kisses had, but still something you could pull out of if necessary.

But then Zelda slipped her arms around his waist, almost as she had earlier after he'd pulled her the rest of the way up the cliff, and the feeling of her hands on his skin ignited something in him that made him pull her close, closer, pressing their bodies together.

She made a muffled sound of pleasure, and turned her head more to the side and opened her mouth a little as she kissed him -- it made the kiss deeper, like more of each of them was invested in it -- more was exchanged. She was still kissing him slowly, but it increased in tempo and intensity until she broke away.

She leaned back a bit, breathing a little hard; he found himself doing the same. Then she whispered to him urgently, "Oh, Link, I want so badly to be intimate with you." This time his breath caught in his throat, so he could hardly respond, but he wrapped his arms tightly around her, holding her close to him, and said softly in her ear that he wanted nothing more in all the world but to share that with her.

He felt her shiver at his words, and nod her head against his neck, and then her hands found the clasps that held his tunic on. She murmured in his ear, "May I?" and he assented. She carefully undid the clasp at the back of the neck, and he felt a sort of electricity, nothing like Urbosa's, ripple across his skin as she slid her other hand down his back to find the other clasps and release them.

He held his breath as she leaned away in order to carefully remove the tunic, then the sleeves, and then paused to get a look at him. The desire and appreciation in her eyes was overwhelming, but he managed to hold up a finger, and then take the blanket, which had fallen aside, and spread it out carefully next to the fire, just as he usually did when he went to sleep, only a bit wider, for the two of them. Then he went and got another blanket to drape over them as he sat again next to her.

Zelda smiled at him, put her hands on his chest and slid them down to his stomach, and then around his sides, making a pleased sound as she explored the way his core muscles moved as he shifted to pull her back close to him. He leaned in, this time, to kiss her; she accepted eagerly, and rapidly it got as urgent as it had a moment before -- until she gently pushed him down against the blanket he'd just laid out.

He laid on his back, arms still wound around her waist, one leg stretched out against her length, the other knee bent, still wearing the Gerudo pants. He let her continue to trace his arms, neck, sides, and chest with her fingers, as if she were making some kind of mental picture of him through touch. Like a sculptor who would have to re-create him from memory, later.

Eventually, he reached up for the clasps on her tunic, and she willingly helped him find the right places to release them. He was surprised, actually, at how hard they were to find. Her traveling clothes, he realized, had to be pretty durable and stay put when she rode, walked, climbed, crouched to take samples, and much more. So perhaps it wasn't so surprising how hard it was to undo. But with her help, soon he was sliding his own hands inside her shirt and finding soft skin to explore.

She shivered as he slid a hand around her side to her back, pulling her close, pulling her down to where he lay. Then she moaned, a soft little, "ohhh..." as he slid his other hand up her front, cupping a breast and finding a nipple hard as if from cold. He found that if he rubbed a thumb over it repeatedly, she moaned a little more, arching her back and biting her lip.

After a bit of this, she urgently reached down to undo the clasps on her pants and slide them off, and then she pressed herself into him, reaching for his hand and guiding him between her legs where she showed him what motions to make. She was damp and soft, and he quickly learned what she wanted, until she cried out quietly as she reached a moment of intense pleasure. Then she stilled him as she lay there, partially draped over him, breathing slowly, getting her wits back about her.

He took a moment to feel a sense of wonder that she trusted him in this way; of course, she trusted him with her life, with her thoughts and feelings, her hopes and dreams and fears, but this was a different kind of trust, and one they hadn't shared before. For a person who used so many words and who had such strong opinions, for her to be willing to express her trust physically to him was... significant.

After she'd rested a moment, she sat up a bit, and looked down at him with a sly gleam in her eye. She leaned down to kiss him, and then let her hands wander again, this time to his trousers and the clasps there. He helped her work those loose, until she could slip her hand inside. He was already quite hard, and she gave him a little look of surprise when she felt it. He waited to see how this surprise would resolve, but she very quickly resumed her exploring, this time seeing how it felt to stroke and squeeze. Always curious, he thought briefly, until after a few moments it became too much for him and he reached down with his hand to show her what to do.

In a way, the sensations were overwhelming enough that some part of him lost track of reality; but at another level, he never forgot for a moment that it was Zelda, pleasuring him. That made the physical and emotional aspects all the more intense, and when it was his turn to reach the peak of intensity, he had to bite his lip not to cry out. When he was done, she lay down next to him, drawing the blanket up on top of them. She rested her head on his chest, and he wrapped his arms around her. The night grew colder, but with the blanket and Zelda snuggled up on top of him, he didn't feel the cold at all.

Exhausted from the day, Zelda dropped off to sleep quickly. Link took a little longer to fall asleep; he turned his head sideways and gazed into the fire as the flames slowly sunk down and became embers. He reflected on why it had been hard to take this step with her... maybe because they'd both lost so much and the thought of losing her was all the more unbearable if they were this close. But then he thought, further, that having the courage to take that step became much easier when you didn't do it alone. A sort of paradox, maybe? That to have help in being brave, you had to be brave enough to reach out? But that was about when his thoughts became increasingly uncoordinated and he drifted off to sleep himself.

**Author's Note:**

> This assumes Hylian physiology is similar to human (other than the pointed ears), which I think isn't a huge stretch. It also assumes that both Link and Zelda know their own bodies and what feels good to them, which is fair, I think, given that they've been intimate in some ways already with other people, and they're effectively eighteen years old.
> 
> written 10-24 March 2019


End file.
